Last year, while attending your first
Intercessional Heads of Government Meeting as Prime Minister, you
declared your Government’s unequivocal commitment to the regional
integration cause and Barbados’ readiness to play a full and active part
in moving the process forward.

I make bold to say that you have been
relentless in your quest; and over the last twelve months, you have
injected a new energy in the movement towards the CARICOM Single Market
and Economy (CSME).

Colleagues, the architects of our regional
experiment envisaged a Caribbean Community working as a unified and
collective grouping to promote economic integration and cooperation
among its members, so that the benefits of integration could be
equitably shared. They also foresaw our Region becoming a more
competitive force in the global arena by pooling resources so that we
could take greater advantage of opportunities that would normally be
inaccessible to small nations operating separately.

The CSME was, therefore, conceptualised to
create a larger marketplace, thereby augmenting economies of scale, and
ultimately melding these small nations into a competitive force in the
global arena. Even as we ask the question “What’s in it for me”, we must
remember that for us to realise our full potential, our focus has to be
on a regional approach that will enable Caribbean economies to become
more competitive and viable on the global stage.

I think President Obama put it well when he declared to his American audience that

“We the People, recognise that we have
responsibilities as well as rights; that our destinies are bound
together; that a freedom which only asks “what’s in it for me”, a
freedom without a commitment to others, a freedom without love or
charity or duty or patriotism, is unworthy of our founding ideals, and
those who died in their defense.”

So, as we engage in this discourse this
evening, let us also seize the opportunity to generate new ideas that
can make the CSME a living reality for our citizenry. What, therefore,
is the imperative that should be driving us in this direction?

In addition to our commitment to pursue a
regional approach to our socioeconomic development, CARICOM countries
have each subscribed to the Sustainable Development Agenda. The appeal
of this agenda is the promise to end poverty; to achieve a level
of human development that is fair and inclusive; and to make possible a
sustainable future for all our people by 2030.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are a decade away
from that milestone. The imperative for the Caribbean Community is very
clear. The successful completion of the Agenda within the timeframe
demands that every CARICOM country embarks on an accelerated process of
economic transformation; and our focus must be on becoming an
internationally competitive trading bloc. There is an urgency,
therefore, for us to accelerate the regional integration movement
through the completion of the single market.

That urgency is underscored by the
worrisome shift towards inward-looking policies and a retreat from
multilateralism and globalisation in some parts of Europe and in the
United States of America, which are traditional trading partners of
CARICOM.

We at the CDB are convinced that CSME is
our best bet for unlocking the economic growth potential of CARICOM
countries and enhancing the prospects for greater prosperity for our
people.

We would do well to take heed of Benjamin
Franklin’s injunction that “[w]e must, indeed, all hang together or,
most assuredly, we shall all hang separately”.